Wednesday, May 4, 2016

New Pope Video: Women Make Poor Employees?

The Bear is old enough to remember the days when the pope's intention was some innocent sentiment that you added to your family rosary to get the plenary indulgence, e.g. "that we may crush the Turk at Lepanto." Now, someone has persuaded Pope Francis that he is not in the public eye enough, so we have these Pope Videos, as they are called.

The first one was for indifferentism, if not syncretism, and we all got pretty worked up about that one. Then they quickly blurred into the bland, formulaic fare we see in this one.

In his review of the last one, the Bear observed, "Like previous Pope videos, it predictably relies on montages of people's faces, looking directly into the camera lens. It has a synthesized score that makes you expect Enya to start singing the intention."

It's true. Positive images accompanied by a soaring synthesized score give way to negative images with a sad score, then the happy music returns for a positive resolution. It is entirely done as a montage, mainly of diverse people looking directly into the camera, with a voiceover by the Pope. He is also briefly shown speaking directly into the camera.

Same with the latest video. And the Bear sees they listened to the Hound at Mahound's Paradise and stuck a woman of African descent in as "X-ray Woman." [NOTE: The consensus among woodland creatures is that X-Ray Woman is Indian. Sorry. But all humans look alike to the Bear.]

Whoever is making these videos has technical expertise, but an utter lack of creativity. Granted, a brief institutional video is not the place for avant garde film-making (although the Bear would pay good money for a Lars von Trier Pope Video.) Catholic ephemerists are way more entertaining and thoughtful.

These videos are, frankly, a waste of time and money for his Holiness. Worse, they seem to lack a spiritual dimension. They could be PAC ads. There is Pope Francis, who has out-Dalai Lama-ed the Dalai Lama as Generic Spiritual Leader of the World. The catch is, you have to part with a lot of Catholic capital to attain that celebrity position.

Women Are Smart

The good news is that women are smart. They can make flow charts or something. And read x-rays. When the Pope is talking about motherhood (which the Church rates slightly above prostitution these days) what they actually show is a schoolteacher with a single child in an empty schoolroom. Apparently, motherhood doesn't figure much into legitimate roles for women. In fact, the one stay-at-home mom fixing lunch for her two kids is -- unbelievably -- included in the Roll of Oppressed Women.

Bad News Ludes

The video also illustrates that women who are in unfulfilling jobs (like floor-scrubbing slaves and stay-at-home moms) might get better ones if they laid off the Quaaludes. Seriously. Poor Scrubbing Woman, Sandwich Mom, and The Gap Sweatshop Seamstress are eerily moving at half the speed of a normal person. "Iiiim juuust aaaas caaaapabuuuhl aaaas aaaa maaan," says Sandwich Mom as she tries to focus her sad eyes on the camera lens while slowly spreading something on a slice of bread. They even blink slowly, like sloths or something. The only time the Bear moves that slowly is when he's been shot in the butt with three tranquilizer darts. (One will do it for a normal Bear, but the Bear has been shot so many times he has built up a tolerance.)

The message the Bear takes away is that unless you want to wait two hours for your Vegemite sandwich, don't go to anyplace that employs women, although you'll probably be okay at the hospital or wherever it is they draw flow charts.

This is nonsense, of course. Being married and having employed women, the Bear has found them brisk and efficient workers. The actual intention isn't bad, it's just that these snarkworthy videos drag the focus off target and onto Pope Francis. Weird how that keeps happening, isn't it?

The Bear has an idea. Although he has a lot of fun with these Pope Videos, simply putting text up online is better. After all, they are prayer intentions for the faithful, not Public Service Announcements from the Vatican. The Pope Videos really have nothing to do with prayer, but are modern three act morality plays highlighting current issues and, of course, starring the Pope.

This underscores the problem with Pope Francis. For a man who was introduced as Señor Humble, it's amazing how much Pope Francis we are subjected to. As with so much in this pontificate, there seems to be a disconnect between the Franciscan Church and genuine Catholic practice.

Billman! Welcome to the Woodlands! If somebody stitched together bits from all the videos so far and autotuned Pope Francis' like Sweet Brown, now THAT would go viral. These... I mean who waits every month for the new Pope Video other than snarky ephemerists like the Bear? The Bear wishes he had added video wizard to his skill set somewhere along the way, but even the Bear can't do everything.

I think you should write an article. "Why Does Pope Francis Hate Black People?" Wait. Didn't you? Maybe these videos are made in Bollywood and black actors are just hard to find. Or maybe he's saving up to have Morgan Freeman in one.

If the Bear may be so bold, Allison is speaking of actor Jonathan Pryce in the movie "Brazil," in which he plays a romantic stuck in a dull job in a dystopian city. Robert de Niro is like some sort of burglar who comes in and fixes things for people, since otherwise it's pretty much illegal.

The shots of Pope Francis speaking to the camera totally freak me out. He does not look like anybody's grandpa. The reflection on his glasses is unpleasant - makes him look like a zombie.

Good point above that the Pope's intentions must be good intentions as they are connected with an indulgence. In our home I was reluctant to pray this way after the Rosary but was out-manned (pun!) by Hubby so we just quickly mutter "fortheintentionsoftheholyfather" and move along. How sad!! I thank Our Lady for her vast understanding and patience with us.Barbara

Nice work Bear! Always good to be Poped once in a while even though it's such a draaaag. From what I've seen so far Hilary could just replace the Pope and make them part of her campaign as it looks like most of the victim categories are covered.

Now, Bear, don't criticize the one child classroom. That may be a Japanese classroom, and one child is pretty good for Japan right now.

Anyone notice the text says "join my petition" rather than pray for his intention? Is this the new approach? We're all going to sign petitions to the UN now, instead of entreating Heaven? Signing petitions is all the rage now, very trendy. Maybe the Bear ought to fill one out for the pope on change.org.

Yes, I noticed ... and the titles reflect what he said. Francis did not ask us to pray for the intention of ... he said we should "manifest" the petition. "Manifest" means just what it means in English, but it can also mean to state or to affirm.

So now we're not asking God to grant our petitions, we're marching and affirming. Gag.

Good point, Rabbit. You are Rabbit, aren't you? Oh bother. People come here for serious discussion and are handed an animal mask at the door. It's like something out of Wicker Man. But you knew the Woodlands was a strange, enchanted place when you entered. You did see the warning sign, right? Wait. Did the Bear remember to post the warning sign?

Anyway, these are hardly true intentions, but, rather, PSAs, aren't they? Another vehicle for Pope Francis to buff his SJW cred. Do you get a plenary indulgence for "manifesting a petition" during your family rosary? Do you have to affirm some trendy, anti-Catholic political opinion in order for it to count? Or do we even bother with indulgences anymore now that the Glorious Age of Franciscan Mercy has dawned?

Gag indeed. But only if you swallow. Do what the Bear does. Seize it in your jaws, shake it around a bit, then bury it (with invective).

How does one abuse the writings and thought of St. Pope JPII? You detach his phenomenology and personalism from his theological interpretative lens. Put it another way, religion properly done, becomes something of an accompanying encounter between human persons, independent of any ontological moral framework, with the focusing on "preferential options" that actualize the personal-communal relationship bond between individuals and groups. Yes, that hurts one's brain, but I don't know how else to put what is found in a vast majority of theological textbooks. It is half of the taught and accepted mainstream Catholic theology for the last 100 years. It is why AL uses lots of half quotes. It is why you won't get the episcopate in large chunks to say something, anything.

Is that not this video? Does that not explain much of everything including Pope Francis' focus on his own personal connectivity with other people? How does Pope Francis see Catholicity? He is the UNIVERSAL Pope who seeks connectivity and a communal bond with all people and to accompany all people in this personal-communal relationship not in seeking a moral order through repentance and conversion but in the experiencing of God's mercy, which is brought about through the "twisting of God's hand" especially through the activity of his own person on behalf of the people that he is accompanying.

Is the soteriology Catholic? Or is it closer to a humanistic Protestantism that sees the Cross as Christ's twisting of the Father's hand and abandonment of the Moral Law to be replaced by the Law of Grace (Mercy)? Christ dies so we do not have to live up to the Moral Law. That is the freedom of Christ that through one's personal encounter with Christ and Christ's accompanying of us that we can be accepted into communion for the persons that we are, warts in all. Communion with those who are not in communion with the moral law is not a problem -- communion for the divorced and remarried is not a problem.

What is a problem is that the peoples of the world are not properly accompanying women in their womaness and helping/supporting them in the actualization of their personal life choices and activities.

Utubeo~ There is that case, but his ideas only build on other earlier ideas. The progress of the 18th century lead to the great alienation of man in the 20th century from nature, each other, and God. St. Pope JPII's thought is an attempted correction, but it only works if the theological lens is in place. St. Pope JPII was aware of this.

Great Bear -- True, it is too easy, and tar makes a mess of feathers worse than fur. Thanks. Though I would say that while AL is a tar-baby, these videos represent more so the desired reality that AL seeks. Score vs. Music.

They probably figured if diazepam or ambien wasn't handling someone's anxiety and/or insomnia, they should probably not be relying on a powerful hypnotic with a strong potential for recreational use. Same thing happened with Nembutal after half of Hollywood suicided themselves with it. Now they're going after hydrocodone. Before long, all that will be left to us will be aspirin. But the Bear's covered. He's got a large stash of tranquilizer darts. "Don't worry 'bout your trouble and your strife" indeed.

"MOTHER of God, save us from this evil man. Save us by your maternal intercessions from this antipope who uses the code language and feel-good platitudes of revolution to denigrate the moral power of femininity; who seduces so many with his shrewd and preternatural sentimentality; who reveres worldly, masculine “success;” who trades in Marxist lies; who falsely accuses men of enslaving women by not paying them equal wages; who never speaks of the destructive envy and lust for power of feminism; who implies that women are not subject to the effects of Original Sin; who evidently believes the autonomous, material condition of women is more important than the spiritual and life-giving work they do for no pay; and who never once mentions you, Holy Queen, the highest model of feminine virtue, in his despicable propaganda piece on the role of women."

My father, who was in the financial sector all of his life, frequently advised that he always went to the female tellers when he conducted his personal banking transactions. He insisted women paid more attention to detail in every respect and personally 'identified' more with their role than men, who were usually just biding time waiting for a promotion, an exit, or to wait on attractive female customers.

Insofar as these papal videos are concerned, I find the manipulation of the viewer to be so obviously calculated as to be insulting. Jesuitical in every sense.

Bear,I reviewed the Pope video for May and, like you, I find it repetitive.

I went to the website listed at the end of the video, www.thepopevideo.org and reviewed the videos from the previous months. Here are my observations on these videos:

The sound track appears, to me, to be the same on the videos. I don't have a good " ear" for music but, I believe that the same three short sound tracks are recycled and played in different order on these 'monthly intention videos.' I would suggest that someone who has better audio knowledge check this out.

Second point, the images appear to be stock video footage. One just has to go to Shutterstock and put 'poor women' or 'small farmer' into the search box for video to get short clips of women sewing and farmers farming. I just noticed, in the credits, that they use Getty Images-stock footage. So much for creativity.

Third point, the audience never sees the Pope's pectoral cross in any of the current videos except for a brief glimpse of it in the March video, "For Children and Families in Difficulty". This starts at the 0.41 mark and you can see that it's tucked into his wide waistband, with only a part of it visible for a few seconds. I decided to see how the other, modern popes wore their pectoral crosses. I googled each pope starting with Pope Emeritus Benedict and worked my way backwards to Pope Pius XII. What I noticed, in all the google images, was that the popes had their pectoral crosses hanging from a chain but that the cross itself was held up higher on the chest with a little hook affair that typically hooked into the third button from the top of the white cassock. In this way, the cross was visible on the pope's chest with the bottom of the cross well above the waist band. The only exception was Pope John XXIII who mostly wore his cross straight 'down' on the chain but not tucked into his waistband.

The absence of the pectoral cross in these videos has me the most perplexed and puzzled. Why isn't it being shown? It's a cross. It's a recognizable symbol of Christianity. Why hide it? The people praying for the Pope's monthly intentions are Catholics who presumably are the ones viewing the videos. I find it very troubling that in 5 videos there is no visible symbol of Christ by the head of His Church on earth.

The pectoral cross is missing because this is Pope Francis, the UNIVERSAL Pope. In a Catholic sense, the Cross represents salvation through repentance and being conformed to Christ crucified so that we might too be raised with Christ. Now I don't think that Pope Francis is hiding the crucifix because he doesn't want to offend people, not at all. The answer is in the soteriology -- if people are not called to live in holiness because ideals are too hard, but rather we are to live under Mercy, then that which unites us is not Christ crucified but rather our personal connectivity with the one who accompanies and encounters us, the one who "twists the Father's hand". Is it possible that Pope Francis sees himself not as the Vicar of Christ in the sense of the one who offers the Sacrifice, but rather in the sense of the one who "twists the hand"? Thus, the universality of the Chair of Peter is seen not in the office to which the person is conformed, but rather in the person's charisma and the person is the highest symbol of that personal-communal connectivity. Perhaps -- it is a very subtle twisting of certain things.

We've all heard of men who remove their wedding rings when trolling the bars for women. Those men don't want anyone to know they're married, especially the salmon they're fishing for. Perhaps Pope Francis enjoys the celebrity status he gains from standing on the bones of St. Peter, but doesn't want anyone reminded about Christ, the Catholic Church, or religion, all of which distract from his Peronist cult of personality. Each time he makes a Pope Video, or talks to reporters in the back of the plane, he secretly hopes he turns into Evita.

I may be wrong but I think Pope Francis' 'cross' does not have a Corpus - it is something else - so maybe better that it does not show. I believe he has ditched the papal ring too and wears something else.Barbara aka Chipmunk (hope it's not too late to pick a woodland persona?)

Whatever happened to a Catholic Pope holding up the Blessed Virgin Mary as the example par excellence of true feminine empowered womanhood? I loathe, abhor, detest and despise this godless pagan feminism that portrays men and their masculinity as the enemy and androgynous lesbian feminism as heroic. There is a difference between authentic feminine womanhood and today's political correct feminism. There is a difference between equality in function and equality in dignity. Jorge Bergoglio refuses to understand any of that. Depose and anathematize Jorge Bergoglio!

LQC. Face it. In so many respects the Catholic Church is Protestant/Pagan in so many ways. Evidence? Everything that's happened since Vatican II especially our "Pope" who provides us the latest wisdom of the world, e.g., A.L., etc.

It's okay LQC. He would make the Bear angry, too, if the Bear didn't make sport of him. Does that make the Bear a bad Catholic? The Bear's probation officer at Fish, Game and Wildlife's Department of Large Talking Predators says it's not a good idea to worry too much or hold things in. He says it could make the Bear snap and you would all be watching some standoff on CNN. The Bear thinks laughing is a healthy response to boobery in high places and shall continue to use the common creature's ancient, legitimate, and effective weapon against the powerful: ridicule. Jorge's a funny little pompous South American Eva Peron wannabe who is clearly not fit to be pope.